


let the soft animal of your body

by forochel



Series: the wonpil variations [3]
Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Happy Ending, Loosely inspired by The King Eternal Monarch, M/M, Modern Royalty, Pining, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:28:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25887343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forochel/pseuds/forochel
Summary: Later, Younghyun would not be able to remember what he'd said that night, dizzy with relief and exhaustion and wonder.or: Kang Younghyun makes a promise, comes of age, falls in love, does his duty. Not necessarily in that order.---An expansion of the drabbles in bysine'sdrabble serieswhere Wonpil is king and abdicates. Takes place in 4 year periods from ages 12 to 32 (+1 at 33). Mostly from Younghyun's POV.
Relationships: Kang Younghyun | Young K/Kim Wonpil
Series: the wonpil variations [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1860622
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35





	1. 12

**Author's Note:**

> by this point this multiverse is truly just AUs and remixes all the way down.
> 
> basically bysine made the mistake of paying attention to me when I said omg but what if WONPIL was the king instead (wrt [chunmyeongok](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24597997)) and then drabbled. and then I made the mistake of having Too Many Feelings about the drabbles. tl;dr I wanted it, so I wrote it.
> 
> (also yes bb obvs i had to use that summary i HAD TO)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> younghyun swears an oath.

_You only have to let the soft animal of your body_  
_love what it loves._  
_Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine._  
_Meanwhile the world goes on._

\-- Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

* * *

**12**

It was one of the rare occasions that Younghyun's mother visited the Palace.

She didn't like to — he hadn't understood why, because beyond the tourist-infested public areas Gyeongbokgung was lovely. So much space, the ocean breeze rustling through the trees, the blue Busan skies interrupted only by hanok wood-hewed and stone-built, the sweeping roofs and their gentle curves like large palms cupping the sky. The gardens dizzying in their array, too, had so many nice hiding spots and you could run through them for days on end.

All of these things collapsed to nothing though, as they sat in tense silence. His mother's hands were folded in her lap, gripping the hem of her tunic top. He had his arm looped through hers in sort of a hug. Together, they stared at the sliding door through which his father had apparently disappeared, in pursuit of the traitor.

It was all a little over Younghyun's head. All he understood was that two days hence, Wonpilie had lost his father and — if he was understanding the whispers and tense lines correctly — almost lost his own life. All for — power? Younghyun didn't understand.

But now he knew that in the lee of beautiful Gyeongbokgung hid a more dangerous, darker world. He understood, perhaps, why his mother didn't like visiting; why his father hadn't ever spoken very much of his work when he had come home.

The door to the King's drawing room slid open. Younghyun turned; his mother didn't.

"I brought tea." It was Wonpil, who seemed to have lost weight in the past two days along with a parent, looking pale and fragile in a way he hadn't ever before. His long fingers gripped a lacquered black tea tray, upon which sat a porcelain teapot and three mugs. Behind him hovered Sergeant Shin, who'd been part of his personal guard when he'd been Crown Prince, hawk eyes on the tray as it trembled a little.

Younghyun glanced at his mother, who seemed to have abstracted into another plane.

"Um, thank you." He hesitated, then forged on. "Wonpil-ah."

He knew he'd chosen right when Wonpil's lips quirked up at the corners, a tiny smile that looked foreign on a face that previously had lent itself mostly to merriment. Wonpil always did things big.

Younghyun didn't want to leave his mother's side, and so was caught.

"Stay there," said Wonpil, still in that quiet, nervous way. "It's okay, we just need a — table, Sergeant?" he gave Sergeant Shin an entreating look.

A tea table — made from some sort of warm, brown wood with striations and polished to a high shine, the legs curved and ending in knobs, old and more expensive than anything in Younghyun's own house, probably — was quickly moved over to where Younghyun sat with his mother. The tray, placed shakily on it. The tea, poured by Wonpil's own hands.

This, apparently, was enough of a shock that Sergeant Shin drew a quick breath in, drawing Younghyun's mother out of whatever she was seeing with that faraway gaze.

"Ah!" She sat up and disentangled her left arm from Younghyun's. "Wonpil- _seja_ , let me, let me—"

With something to do, perhaps, his usually energetic mother gained some of her usual vigour. Wonpil was ushered into a chair of his own, and the tea was duly poured and distributed.

They sunk into silence again, after.

Younghyun didn't know what to say; his mother opened her mouth once, glanced at Wonpil, and then sighed before looking back at the door through which his father had apparently travelled to another world; and Wonpilie was sipping slowly and quietly at his cinnamon ginger tea, hands wrapped around the warm porcelain.

Younghyun didn't know how long they sat like that; didn't know how he'd managed sitting so still for so long. Well, he hadn't. He'd had to get up to walk around the room, inspect the various wall paintings and symbolic rocks that were displayed on plinths. Wonpil had sat with his mother, though; when he'd glanced at them from across the room, he'd leaned a little into his mother's arm. Looking at them like this, the numbness in Younghyun was lanced with an ache.

It was long past either of their bedtimes when there was a strange hollow sound, like wind through a stand of bamboo trees, and two men fell through the extremely delicate traditional paper screen doors that separated the King's drawing room from the _toenmaru_ beyond.

In the ensuing chaos, Younghyun only sleepily noticed his mother shoving him behind herself; Sergeant Shin shoving Wonpil behind him, and an entire complement of Royal Guards boiling in through through the doors with as much drama but much less physics-defying than his father and Wonpil's Evil Uncle Sangchul, as he'd taken to calling him privately in his own mind.

Only after Evil Uncle Sangchul was borne away by Lieutenant Seo and some other Guards whom Younghyun didn't recognise, did two things happen:

One: His father turned around from giving his team instructions, and his mother burst alarmingly into tears; her fingers on Younghyun's arm left white prints when she let go of him to go to his father.

Two: Wonpil inched out from behind the wall of Guards who had immediately surrounded him.

At an extreme loss for what to do — he wanted to hug his father, but his mother seemed to have that well in hand — Younghyun inched over to Wonpil.

"What" — his mother demanded tearily with that terrifying maternal third eye for where Younghyun was — "are you doing all the way over there?"

He didn't know how long they'd huddled together, thoroughly soaking his father's pretty grubby shirt.

Post-disentanglement, partly because his mother's earring had got caught in a button and Younghyun just hadn't wanted to let go, his father turned a neat half-circle to face —

"Oh," Younghyun murmured to himself.

Because Wonpil had been watching quietly for however long this reunion had taken — Wonpilie, who had so recently lost his own father, and who now was all alone in the world but for his noona and relatives who couldn't come home. When Younghyun glanced down, Wonpil's fingers were interlocked and gripping each other so hard his knuckles had gone white.

" _Seja-jeoha_. I —" whatever Younghyun's father had been about to say died on his tongue when Wonpil darted forward and threw his arms around him. " _S...seja-jeoha_?"

Whatever Wonpil said to Younghyun's father was mangled through tears when he tilted his face up.

Younghyun looked at his mum, bewildered, only to find that she'd covered her mouth and that her eyes were glimmering with fresh tears.

The rest of the Royal Guards, when he looked to them instead, all had the same tender shock reflected on their faces. Hoary old Sergeant Park was looking to the side, but his nose was tellingly pink.

" _Seja_ — Wonpil-ah," Younghyun's father murmured, "I'm sorry, I can't hear you."

Wonpil swallowed with a loud gulp. "I'm just," he hiccupped, "glad that you came back, Captain."

"Me too." Younghyun's father put a hand on Wonpil's curly head. "Thank you for your —"

"Because," Wonpil tripped on, "because otherwise Younghyunie-hyung would be really s—sad, and _eomonim_ t-too, and — and all the Guards, and I c-couldn't — not —" he sniffed loudly, voice breaking.

Somewhere in the midst of Wonpil's babble, the ache from before came back again. Younghyun couldn't understand how Wonpil was thinking about _him_ when — when everything that had happened was still so fresh. Him and his mother and everyone else. Because Younghyun's dad might've died, but _Wonpilie's_ really had, and — and —

Later, Younghyun would not be able to remember what he'd said that night, dizzy with relief and exhaustion and wonder. He remembered the impact of his knees against the floor; remembered the tear-shine in Wonpil's surprise-round eyes; the way the big room seemed to have narrowed to just the two of them and whatever strange, childish mash of oath-proposal he improvised and the need to make Wonpil understand something Younghyun himself hadn't at the time.

And then of course, his mother's aghast " _ _Younghyun__!" and his father's remonstrations, the way Wonpil silently gaped at him in bewildered wonder. His foolhardy promise to _Protect you, Wonpilie, it's okay, you don't have to accept now. But I'll show you_.

Even later: taking the oath properly again, because he'd had four years wear his parents down. Four years of being called upon to track Wonpil down all over the extensive grounds of _Gyeongbokgung_. Four years to cleave to his promise, hazily made but grown firm over time.

On the night that his father returned to them from some strange other world, though, Younghyun was twelve and overwhelmed and suddenly, abruptly, very sleepy when Wonpil nodded.

Equally overwhelmed and still tear-laden, Wonpil whispered, "Okay. Hyung. Come back tomorrow, okay? I —" he paused and glanced quickly from Younghyun's father and then to his mother, before looking back at Younghyun. "Come back tomorrow. After the, ah" — he yawned — "the ceremonies."

Nobody his age, Younghyun thought with a fiery lick of _something_ in his chest, should look so tired.

"Okay. I have school, but after that" — Younghyun did not bother looking at his parents — "I'll come visit. I promise."

*


	2. 16

*****

**16**

The fifth summons in about just as many weeks came just as Younghyun had jumped out to what felt like the thousandth mid-burpee plank.

"Kang!" shouted Sergeant Song from the edge of the training grounds. " _Pyeha_ wants you!"

Younghyun gritted his teeth and closed his eyes. Nobody else said anything, but he could _feel_ the judgement rolling off them as they leapt to their feet and up into the air.

Peeling himself off the ground, which he'd flopped onto in surprise, he got to his feet. Wound his way through the rows of guards who had moved onto lunges.

"Sorry about the burpee interruptus." Sergeant Song bumped him with an elbow, all friendly-like. Everyone was so _friendly_. It made Younghyun nervous. "But, well, when _pyeha_ calls, we run, right?"

"Mmm." Younghyun flexed his fingers. It was hard, these lines being drawn in the sand. His instinct was to tease out the wait for Wonpilie, make him stomp his foot in childish pique the way he rarely did after his eleventh year. But Wonpilie and _pyeha_ weren't the same, was it?

Irritation flashed quick through him — why couldn't Wonpil just _see_. Quick on its heels, though, formless incomprehensible guilt. Why and whence, Younghyun couldn't make out. He was fulfilling his promise, wasn't he? Working hard, sweating and browning under the high sun, so that he could make sure Wonpil never came close to being fucking _murdered_ again.

"That's a resounding yes," said Sergeant Song drily.

"I mean yes," Younghyun said hastily as they turned onto the garden path that would take them to the King's private quarters.

Sergeant Song snorted and pat him on the shoulder. "We do say no to that kid on other occasions, you know. Even though it's hard."

Unsure of what response was expected, Younghyun nodded.

"Aren't you going to shower first, though?"

Sweat was dripping down from his hair into his eyes, down his neck, gathering in the dip of his back. But if Wonpil had just two weeks before seen fit to come to training and call Younghyun away just to sulk at him in front of all _his_ guards, he could deal with Younghyun being gross.

Younghyun shrugged. "I'm supposed to run, right?"

He regretted it not even a second later, when Sergeant Song gave him a sidelong look.

Then the man sighed and raised his palms to the skies in a shrug. "Technically, yes. Well. He's in the piano room. I'm sure you know your way there."

He peeled off east on a branching path to the IT building, and Younghyun was left to hurry along by himself. The vast grounds he had delighted in exploring with Wonpil as a child were now a little more inconvenient.

The guards on duty — Corporal Moon and Sergeant Jang — nodded and smiled at him as he jogged past them with a wave.

The piano room in a secondary building perpendicular to the main cluster of rooms that formed Wonpil's own quarters, connected by a roofed, open-air walkway that gently ascended with the swell of the earth. Wonpil's quarters had been renamed the King's when he had ascended the throne. He had adamantly refused to move. For good reason, Younghyun thought. Wonpil's _noona_ had backed him up, and nobody really wanted to doubly traumatise a child.

Younghyun's thoughts carried him off the walkway, and onto the deep-set _toenmaru._

On the other end of the wooden planks, Wonpil's shoes were lined neatly up outside the closed doors to his piano room. A pretty, tripping melody played by just one hand drifted out through the thin paper screens. He crossed to the doors. Thought about taking his shoes off too. Knocked briskly instead and slid one door open.

Inside, Wonpil looked up with a smile that trembled a little in the corners, if Younghyun had been looking close enough.

"Hyung," he said, "I learnt a new —"

" _Pyeha_ , I'm all over sweat."

Wonpil's smile calcified. "I don't mind."

"It wouldn't be —"

"Just tell me," Wonpil said low and quick, smile falling away and turning his back, "that you aren't interested. I —" a hitch in his breath had Younghyun starting forward, alarmed.

"I'm interested," Younghyun said quickly. "I am, but —"

Wonpil shook his head, shower-loosened curls bouncing. Then his back straightened. "No, you may leave now."

"I can come back later, after training," Younghyun offered hopelessly, thinking about the piles of homework he had yet to finish, but reluctant to leave things like this.

"I have a dinner engagement," Wonpil said, frost he must have learned in his court lessons lacing each word.

Halfway out of his shoes, Younghyun was overcome by the sensation of something slipping from his grasp, a confusion of his internal compass. This wasn't what he'd meant. Not what he wanted. This cold distance burning like dry ice. "Or — or this Sunday? I'm not on duty then."

Thin shoulders tensed, the line of them curving in confusingly. "Perhaps," Wonpil said. "But don't let me keep you."

In addition to the physical training over the past few months had been lessons in etiquette. Younghyun knew that he shouldn't make Wonpil ask thrice, so he bowed. Said "Yes, _pyeha_ ," and went.

He met Princess Yeeun at the head of the walkway. She must've just got back from independent study; she was still in her school uniform, hair untidy like she'd been gripping it tight. He bowed. She paused and gave him a long, impenetrable look.

"You need a shower" was all she said, though, before ducking past him and charging into the piano room with a " _Pirimiri_ , dinner's in an hour, what on earth are you — " the door slid shut behind him, muting her voice.

The invitation to the Palace never materialised. Something told him this was something no number of Pororo trinkets could fixed, so he didn't try. Threw himself instead into training and studies — he had sworn an oath and would fulfil it. Throughout circuit exercises, long runs around the Palace grounds, being thrown to the mats over and over in the guise of combat training — Younghyun felt a gravitic pull towards the north of the palace grounds.

But the coldness in Wonpil's voice still felt like frostbite across his shoulders, long after the fact, even under the sun.

So he trained and listened and learnt. When Wonpil snuck out to play football with neighbourhood kids on the streets, with the stuck up snotty kids at his elite private school on the pitch, Sergeant Shim took him along with the squad. Younghyun learnt how to secure the area, how to stand still. How to be simultaneously relaxed and ready.

Sometimes he thought Wonpil might be looking straight at him, in the trees or in the shadows. But then a fellow player would shout, and Wonpil would look away and take off after the ball.

It was hard not to go running whenever Wonpil tripped and fell — especially on the asphalt, with the neihbourhood kids who didn't seem to care about fouling or tackling the king. The chaebol scions were a little more careful. Perhaps that was why Wonpil played with them less. Perhaps that was why Wonpil smiled with the neighbourhood kids more, as they played in empty carpark floors or outside in a sleepy residential street, with bins and trees as goal markers and recalcitrant cats refusing to move from sun-warm asphalt playing goalkeeper.

There was easy camaraderie there too: 

A tall _hyung_ buying ice lollies from the stationery shop nearby, distributing them with egalitarian benevolence; Sergeant Shin sighed in everyone's ear as Wonpil unwrapped his own and bit in with nary a thought.

Wonpil bringing his own cash a few session later and treating everyone to pikachu katsu, when the weather had turned cool. His football friends and him, all sweatily trooping up to the ajusshi who always set up shop across from the makeshift football court. If the ajusshi was suspicious about the sturdy adults in plainsclothes marked only by discreet _mugunghwa_ pins visiting his stall to buy snacks, he said nothing. And later, if he recognised the sun-tanned boy dripping with sweat, loose curls sticking out from under a backwards baseball cap, speaking cutglass broadcaster Corean in a Busan back-alley, he also said nothing.

It seemed no-one could bring themselves to begrudge their boy-king this.

Near the end of the year, shortly after Younghyun's seventeenth birthday, at his grandparents' for a cold, snowy solstice:

 _Is he as handsome as the photos make him look_.

The question shook Younghyun. As he mulled over his answer, he felt the distance between them anew. It had been over a year since the day he had gone to Wonpil, childish offering in hand. The Pororo trinket, hard won at the arcade on a rare afternoon off to play with his classmates; their bafflement at his determination to win this one specific thing; the teasing.

On the bus home alone: the realisation of perhaps how odd their friendship might seem; how out of joint Wonpil was to the rest of the world. A sudden fierce feeling of satisfaction, to be the only one in the world to have this. Now, in hindsight, the chewing notion of Wonpil's loneliness.

It had been so long since the last summons.

Younghyun hadn't been along to any actual engagements yet, none at which Wonpil was styled and coiffed for the cameras. He only knew Wonpil solemn at his lessons in the Palace, laughing on a makeshift football pitch, playing the piano with an abstract look on his face then looking up with an expectant smile.

He shook his head at last. "Even more so when he smiles."

His cousins squealed and started talking over each other.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught his mother turn to look at him sharply.

He ignored her and got up to go help _halmeoni_ with the tea.

*


	3. 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there were SO MANY good moments in the drabbles for this year that I just ... had to expand on ALL OF THEM. so this is a longer chapter than I had intended on for this "short series of ficlets/vignettes".

*

**20**

There had been no question about it, the moment Acting Captain Song had given him his thinly-veiled orders.

"Well ... you aren't going to study music, are you?" His mother asked, when he went home with the news.

Younghyun paused in the middle of folding old t-shirts into a storage bag. "Uh. Maybe I'll learn things by ... osmosis?"

She sighed and went to get the vacuum.

Weeks of preparation later, after so many briefings and training exercises his head was still whirling with scenarios and contingency plans when he followed Wonpil onto the plane, he realised what his mother had been asking.

"Oh," he said out loud, while taking Wonpil's carry-on for him.

Wonpil raised a fine eyebrow at him. "Oh?"

With some embarrassment, Younghyun ducked his head. "Sorry -- just, a stray thought." He heaved the backpack into the overhead compartment.

"Hyung --" Wonpil started. Bit his lip when Younghyun looked at him, eyes wide. "Lieutenant. I'd like my laptop, please."

"...of course." Younghyun retrieved it, and then spent the rest of the flight with his thoughts chasing themselves around in circles.

"Lieutenant," said Sergeant Shin, when they were met by the embassy staff at the house and Younghyun had made to follow. He was holding Younghyun back by the elbow, and nodded at Corporal Yang, who had already slipped into place behind Wonpil. "You should get settled too."

Younghyun blinked and looked around the vestibule. Oh, right, he had his own luggage too: his backpack, duffel bag, and suitcase. Further into the house, Captain Choi was in conference with the head of the embassy detail.

"Of course, thank you." Bags on his back, in his hands, he started for the stairs.

He came down a while later after systematic inspection of each storey -- the house was comically big for only two people, even with a spare room for a rotation of extra guards. Wonpil's bedroom was two flights up from the ground floor; Younghyun's by the landing and separated from his by the bathroom. The first floor contained another bathroom and two empty bedrooms -- one for a guard, perhaps. And the ground floor, he had just found, contained two sitting rooms and a dust-sheet covered dining room. The kitchen and laundry were in the basement, he surmised.

"Have you seen everything?" asked Agent Shim, hands loose by his sides.

Mind churning away about security checks, timetables, what he'd do with all this space and time _alone_ with Wonpil for the first time in so many years, he made an absent acknowledgement.

"All in order?" Captain Choi asked a little more sharply, though he'd been given a tour too probably, whilst Younghyun had been finding his own room and half-putting his things away.

Younghyun nodded. "I'll do a pass tonight."

"All right. We'll check in with you later. Briefing tomorrow at the embassy -- a car will arrive at 0700 hours."

Trying to contain his wince -- the jetlag was chewing at him -- Younghyun said, "Yes, sir."

Wonpil was quiet, watching this exchange.

It couldn't be anything new to him, but for some reason Younghyun felt itchy. Uncomfortable. Like he shouldn't be witnessing this.

Everyone left, eventually -- after Younghyun had demonstrated three times over that he knew how to arm and unarm the security system, and had been shown the back door, the sorry little back garden, and the basement.

Everyone left, eventually, and then there were two.

Whatever Wonpil had been holding in whilst Younghyun was occupied, it spilled out now into shining eyes. He was half-turned to Younghyun, his right arm flung out to point down the corridor.

 _"_ Did you see the piano?" Wonpil asked, excitement bubbling up through his voice. Familiar of old, but new with time. Like a fresh breeze, lifting and settling the Younghyun's tumbling thoughts. "In the other room?"

He had. Of course the embassy would've found a house with a piano.

 _"_ I did, _pyeha,_ " he said, and was stopped by Wonpil's hand on his inner elbow.

 _"Wonpil_ ," he whispered. "In this house. Please."

Younghyun looked down at Wonpil, at the way his eyes were large and pleading, the nervousness in the set of his brows and his jaw. At the press of Wonpil's fingertips into his skin.

"Yes," he whispered too, feeling a little like they were in a conspiracy of two. Like this was something illicit, to be hidden away small and precious. "I saw the piano, Wonpil-ah."

It sat awkwardly on his tongue at first, like a long-forgotten language. It felt wrong; it felt wrong that it felt wrong. But Wonpil smiled small and pretty, lips curling like he was trying to suppress it the first time Younghyun tried his name, and the second, and again the third, and after that -- this was Pavlov, probably.

"Oh, sorry," he said one evening, when the leaves on the plane trees outside had still been turning from green to autumnal orange and brown. Younghyun had been looking for a place to write his reports, and come upon Wonpil in the kitchen.

Wonpil looked up from the booklet of strange, esoteric music exercises he was working on. "What for?"

"I didn't mean to --" Younghyun paused, and swallowed. Wonpil's face was open and curious; the strange novelty of it struck him to the quick. When had the closed-off, self-possessed mask of _jusang jeonha_ become more familiar to him than this?

A quirk of Wonpil's mobile mouth. "Didn't mean to?"

Refinding his voice, Younghyun said, "Intrude. I'll find --"

"You're not intruding." Wonpil glanced down at his notes and back up again. "I don't mind."

Younghyun cautiously took a seat. Put down his laptop, a sturdy, battered thing.

It was warm and peaceful in the kitchen; the radiator put out an astonishing amount of heat. Wonpil muttered to himself as he worked, and occasionally sighed. He had his head cradled in one hand whenever Younghyun glanced up, untamed curls tufted between his fingers.

He was halfway through his report when a loud series of cracks had him snapping his head up. Wonpil was mid-stretch, arms out overhead and his back arched; he looked sheepish when he caught the alarm on Younghyun's face.

"It's just my joints," he said. "We're learning these health stretches for a module. You're not on duty for those, I think."

Still a little spooked, Younghyun shook his head slowly. "No, I'm not." Which reminded him. "I ... am surprised."

Wonpil raised his eyebrows. "It's an occupational hazard."

"Not that. I just thought ... I shadow you all day, I thought you'd be sick of me by now."

Something -- _several_ somethings -- unparsable flitted across Wonpil's face. To Younghyun's regret, his words had made something close off behind Wonpil's eyes; the easy half-nostalgic openness of before vanished like a wispy dream.

Younghyun watched helplessly as Wonpil rolled his shoulders and bent to his work again. His face was shadowed as he murmured, "I'm not. Don't worry, hyung, I'll tell you if I am. Finish your report."

He finished his report, but absently, thoughts ticking away as he typed on automatic.

Two years ago, Wonpil had run away to Younghyun's family home in Busan.

 _Would you have worried had I not been King?_ Wonpil had asked, like an absolute fool. He hadn't been King when his evil uncle Sangchul had sent men to _kill him_. It still baffled Younghyun, to think about.

After that, after they'd eaten _eomma_ 's pajeon -- Wonpil had come and sat by Younghyun, who had been trying to concentrate on integration by parts. He'd squinted at the maths, shrugged, and then read comics instead. It had all felt so incredibly normal, like Younghyun had had one of his school friends over.

Maybe the house could be like that time. A capsule.

In time, their capsule expanded to accommodate others. All drawn into the orbit of Wonpil's outsize presence.

First was Wonpil's cousin Dowoon, the improbably Glaswegian cousin who seemed permanently surprised that he was a prince. They found him living in a bedsit somewhere in East London, in a building so dodgy Younghyun had wanted more security detail than just himself on the inside. Dowoon opened the door bleary-eyed and slightly hungover. A few awkward seconds ticked by as he stared blankly at them.

Then his jaw dropped.

His room, when they were let in, was half occupied by his electronic drum set. And then they discovered, when he put the kettle on for tea, that he shared a kitchen with five other people; that he'd thought the flat had been broken into (again!) the other day because he'd temporarily lost his laptop in all his blankets; and that he had so many blankets because the radiator was spotty on a good day.

"Dowoonie," Wonpil said very seriously, reaching out to hold his newly met cousin's hands, "you should absolutely come live with me."

And then they were three.

Next was the chaos agent that was Park Jinyoung, blowing into their lives like a hurricane. Wonpil met him at one of Dowoon's gigs in Shoreditch, this wild Corean-British boy with a big heart and little idea of whom he'd become fast friends with over the course of a night. The shudder of foreboding down Younghyun's spine as he had witnessed this meeting of true minds had had _no idea_.

Wonpil did not, thankfully, invite him to live with them. Instead he requested that Jinyoung be cleared for visits to the Belgravia house, then pouted and sulked like he was fifteen again.

"Why," he demanded petulantly in the flickering light of the fireplace, "is it taking _so long_."

Reining in his exasperation, Younghyun said, "He's an unknown quantity, _pyeha_. We must be thorough. I beg your patience."

For all the fuzzy bumbling Dowoon projected to the world, he had finely tuned senses for impending unpleasantness.

"I'm sure it'll be fine, Wonpilie-hyung," he quickly put in. Younghyun watched, a sour feeling in his abdomen, as Wonpil visibly softened. Dowoon continued, half-joking: "I mean, I've probably got more crime in my past than Jinyoung."

"That's Jinyoung- _hyung_ to you, brat," Wonpil retorted, but left Younghyun and the guard alone after that.

Without even the bonds of blood or -- or a long, freighted history, Wonpil fell dizzying fast into that friendship. Too easy, too alarming, if you weren't there in person to witness the snap and fizz of their chemistry. Younghyun hadn't seen Wonpil so playful in what felt a lifetime. So he wrote reassurances to his superiors, to Lady Noh, to Princess Yeeun. Felt sharp hooks set into his gut. Regret was a familiar taste by now, though he couldn't know why: he was here doing what he'd sworn. He was keeping Wonpil safe.

"Hyung," said Wonpil one evening, careful and cordial, stopping by the sitting room with Jinyoung by his side. "We're going to study in a cafe tomorrow. It's near Jinyoungie's uni."

Younghyun raised his head, blinked, and dipped his head in acknowledgement. "Do you know its name?"

"Oh, um. Fork. That's its name. Off Tavistock Place. Right, Jinyoungie?"

Jinyoung's eyes were dark and considering as he glanced between the two of them. "Yeah, it's on -- I forget the street name, but it's across from a used bookshop."

Glancing down at his laptop, Younghyun zoomed in on the map that he'd called up whilst Wonpil had been talking. "Okay, found it." Younghyun looked up again and smiled briefly, aiming for reassuring. "Thank you for telling me."

Wonpil hesitated.

Younghyun tilted his head while switching over to his palace email inbox. Was there something else about the cafe he should know?

But Wonpil only nodded, murmured an, "Of course, hyung," and tugged Jinyoung along with him back down the corridor.

Again, Younghyun was left with the distinct feeling of something slipping by. Of there having been perhaps something he should've said, or done. He looked at his email, at the blinking cursor, and sighed as he started typing out his briefing note.

Voice carrying clear in the stillness of the house, Jinyoung could be overheard as they thumped up the stairs asking, "Why do you need to tell him?"

"He needs time -- they need time." Wonpil's voice drifted back down. "To prepare for, for things."

"Wait. He's live-in security?"

A pause. "Yes?" Wonpil sounded confused. "Though -- well, essentially. Yes."

Despite himself, despite the fact that he knew he really should have just shoved his earphones in, Younghyun wished to _hell_ he knew what Wonpil had wanted to say before his hesitation.

Jinyoung made a sound of surprise. "I thought -- well, that makes sense. And ..."

Then they passed out of hearing.

Younghyun sat, fingers stilled, for a long moment. He wasn't sure how to feel. He wasn't sure that what he was feeling, this sour clench around his solar plexus, was something he deserved to be feeling.

Maybe it was this -- this steady inexorable build-up of vinegar acidly churning in the spaces between his viscera, which ate through every hard-earned security instinct at Victoria.

Or perhaps it was the way Wonpil had stiffened but not even tried to wrench away, when Younghyun caught him by the forearm at the ticket counter.

Or perhaps, just, the steely desperation in Wonpil's _I'm not going back_ , the way tears had gleamed in his eyes.

It had shaken Younghyun, to see them there, to think that _he_ was the cause of those tears, the tell-tale pinkening of Wonpil's nose.

 _Let's not_ , he'd said, while the ticketing agent had stared at this afternoon KBS drama playing out in front of her. _Come on_.

Sitting next to Wonpil on that park bench, hands wrapped around paper cups steaming with hot chocolate, Younghyun suddenly remembered being fifteen and ducking through the green curtain of a willow's drooping fronds. Wonpil had looked up, ignorant or uncaring of the frenzy his disappearance had thrown the Palace into. Had smiled, and beckoned Younghyun close to listen to some crashing, sweet piano piece.

Wonpil spoke, quietly and mostly to his cup, about his hopes and dreams: his music, his classmates' ambitions, the way his world was peeling open like a cruel trick. The way he just wanted to breathe and be, for a day or two. The way he felt legacy like a cage, the heavy weight of the dragon robes.

"What did you dream of," Wonpil asked at last, when he seemed to have run out of words, "before you -- before?"

Younghyun blinked and thought hard. He wanted to return a truth for all the ones Wonpil had given him, but there had been nothing else in his horizon since he had been twelve. "I think I wanted to be a firefighter? Or a basketball player."

"I remember that, I think." Wonpil smiled a little, though he was still looking into his cup, as though he could divine something in the muddy dregs. "The firefighting. You tried to practise that carry on me."

The problem was that now Wonpil had said it, Younghyun could remember it too. The yelling that day -- the way he'd been banned from Wonpil's presence for what had seemed an eternity but only had been a fortnight.

"Well," he said, wondering a little at the way something in his chest was easing. At they way this felt like they were still friends. Like they weren't just a king and his live-in security. "You were a lot smaller than me."

"I was _not_." Wonpil looked up, colour in his cheeks.

"You still are." Younghyun smiled to take the sting out of it. "Though you aren't that much shorter anymore, I suppose."

Wonpil slumped most unmajestically. Scowled at his boots. "I can't help it if you work out so much. I'm an _artist_." Then he slumped a little more. Murmured. "I wish."

Biting his lip, Younghyun reached out to take Wonpil's empty cup. The same cold that emptied the park sufficiently for all the privacy they could desire was also turning his ears numb. "You can be both, Wonpil-ah."

He watched, nervous, as Wonpil's throat worked.

"Can I?"

"Sure. Just look at the King of Thailand. He does those jazz things, doesn't he?"

"I'm not sure --" Wonpil sighed. "I suppose. But it's not ..."

It wasn't what he really wanted, Younghyun knew now. Not what he longed for, every time his classmates talked about competitions and exhibitions, or teaching, or gigs, or the petty world-engulfing worries of normal teenagers without a laid, fenced path ahead of them. Even Younghyun's path had been of his own choice.

Younghyun hesitated, then decided that if he'd elected to run away for the afternoon with the king, he may as well forget everything. For now. "I know. I'm sorry."

The look that Wonpil gave him was long and opaque, before he got to his feet. "Is it too late to run away properly?"

The lick of whimsy in his voice was a buoy for Younghyun. Told him that the true danger had passed. "I'll buy you a sandwich."

Despite the terrible Meal Deal sandwich from Boots that Younghyun bought, whatever dam that had held Wonpil back before seemed to be dismantled overnight. It was as though the sun was emerging from the clouds Younghyun had been forging determinedly through. The pure, cleansing warmth of his affection was like sunshine pouring into shadowed vales.

With the resurgent ease between them came a new awareness. A veil had dropped, and in that act cast new light on the lifelong truth that the best features of both Wonpil's genetic lines were by some quirk of nature combined in one face. Only the standing media moratorium ruthlessly enforced by the Palace had thus far spared him from the kind of unsavoury commentary Younghyun sometimes overheard in the halls of the RCM.

In the years between sixteen and now, Wonpil had by necessity become beautiful like some remote fastness; now, he was a lovely, louche creature of flesh and blood.

This realisation was a curling something that frightened and thrilled in in equal measure; guilt and pleasure shivered up his spine, heated his blood. The old devotion was catalysing into something new.

Now, every innocuous action caught his gaze and held it, as though Wonpil had put a spell on him. Undignified grunts as Wonpil stretched sleep out of his joints at breakfast became dear; the sleepy artless sprawl of his limbs on the chaise longue, unconscious of the way his shorts rode up, and the pale skin under the part of his dressing gown now something to steal glances at out of the corner of Younghyun's eye; and more captivating than the rest: Wonpil absorbed in his music, the nape of his neck bent and exposed as he laboured away at the piano.

But if Younghyun was under a spell, then it had been cast long before London, years and years and years ago.

*


	4. 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my notes for this chapter say "caption this 'how to make yourself sad in 500 words'". after expanding on the initial sketch I laid out ... it's still how to make yourself sad ngl.

*

**24**

Whilst proceeding back along the long corridors and walkways to the king's quarters, Wonpil made an idle remark about how well Kwon Euntaek had played. Something about octaves and a light touch. He sounded admiring.

In response to the general murmur of "indeed, _pyeha_ ", Wonpil laughed.

It was dry and knowing, and pulled Younghyun's eyes away from his alert scanning to Wonpil himself. There, on Wonpil's face, the small wry sideways tug of his lips that Younghyun _hated_. He tried to forget how Wonpil _used_ to laugh: a burbling hiccup, with his whole face. But those were not memories easily folded away.

"You don't all have to humour me all the time." Wonpil sounded amused, light as a tightrope walker. "I think I got quite enough of that, this evening."

He had; the five young promising pianists invited to an audience with the king had been most eager to please. Some had been sweetly flustered; others, to Younghyun's eye, verging on obsequious. And _some_ , entirely too impertinent.

But Wonpil liked impertinence; he adored Dowoon and Jinyoung for it, and later on the Royal Tailor Sungjin -- with whom Wonpil almost looked forward to fittings -- and Jae, whom the Palace had manouevred into a residency at the Belgravia house.

Of course Wonpil would have been tickled into surprised laughter, honest and as astonishing to the pianists as most of the Guard, when Kwon Euntaek had made some horribly flirtatious music pun that went entirely over Younghyun's head. It hadn't even been in _English_.

A sudden burn of anger, quick and blazing, had scoured through Younghyun, before settling to a simmer. But now even the simmer was cooling into something sadder -- what right had he, after all. That pianist had been very handsome; Younghyun had noticed the pink on Wonpil's cheeks. It was good, he had decided, to see colour in that face.

Perhaps, he thought now, it was better this way.

"Well," said Corporal Nam, who also tended to the impertinent, "in which case I must confess I don't know what you were talking about, _pyeha_."

This, however, had the effect of making Wonpil laugh that bright, amused thing for the second time that night.

Younghyun closed his eyes briefly as they walked, barely restraining a laugh of his own.

Before Corporal Nam could be inspired to trying any further witticisms on the King, however, Sergeant Han took her partner with her to examine the outer perimeter, peeling off at the first entrance to the King's quarters.

Then the other two guards in their company took up their spots on the _toenmaru_ outside Wonpil's front room -- far enough from the bedroom to provide the king with privacy, close enough to come running if anything was amiss. It was not an enviable duty. The shutters were all closed against the late November rains and the modernisation efforts had started with the royal family's quarters, so that electric heating ran under the close-fitted wooden boards on the _toenmaru_. Still, it would always be colder out there. 

Through this, Younghyun held the developing thought in his mouth like a bitter pill until they entered the King's private drawing room.

He kept himself busy checking the room while he thought about keeping his tone light, about speaking aloud the thing that felt like he'd be tearing out one regretful hook in his heart with his back turned -- but that would be by far the greater discourtesy.

Wonpil had sat down on his sofa with a sigh, and was now occupied with carelessly peeling off layers of silks to puddle around him. The Royal Tailors would undoubtedly have a fit the next day.

Completing his circuit of the room and finding nothing to delay him any longer, Younghyun stood hesitating at the door.

"What is it?" Wonpil asked, not looking up.

"You don't ..." Younghyun paused, forged on. "You don't have to hold back, for me."

Stopping in the middle of undoing a toggle, Wonpil looked up at him. His face was still for an unnerving moment, before it shivered, broke, reformed.

Incredulously, he laughed. "Are you jealous, Captain?"

"Wonpil-ah," Younghyun said, low and hurt. He had thought -- he didn't know what he'd thought. He hadn't been thinking clearly, that was the problem.

Across the room, Wonpil sucked in a quick breath.

His face, already pale on the best of days, had gone white. The light was low in the drawing room, but it was clear that his eyes were abruptly limned with tears. How long had it been, since Younghyun had held his name in his mouth? Long enough that the words hung heavy in the air between them. Long enough that the yearning sent fresh pain lancing through him.

Mistakes upon mistakes, tonight.

"My apologies, _pyeha_." Younghyun dipped his head, contrite. "I ... overstepped."

He stood, hands clenched by his sides, head bowed and waiting.

There was only silence, then the sofa cushions sighing a little, the rustling of silk, and socked feet sliding against the smooth _hanji_ floor. He stood his ground, but Wonpil had come too close. The heat of his body was something Younghyun had to shut his eyes against. The palms of his hands ached.

The ghost of a touch against his knuckles. "Look at me."

Against his will, Younghyun opened his eyes. He swallowed hard. What kind of monster must Younghyun be, to make Wonpil _this_ miserable, when only hours before he had seemed almost happy in the company of fellow musicians. When he had been pink with the pleasure of -- of being flirted with.

" _Hyung_ ," Wonpil pleaded, like a bleeding wound, eyes glassy. "Please, you know we musn't -- but how can you think --" He broke off, tears spilling silently over.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Younghyun lost what composure he had been hanging onto, stumbling back so he wouldn't reach out, wouldn't touch. The time for cradling Wonpil close and wiping his tears away was long past. The cold shock of this fresh distance was like plunging into the winter sea. "I -- will leave you to -- " he lost the words. "I'm so, so sorry."

Wonpil opened his mouth, closed it, hiccupped around a sob. Drew himself back together with so much effort it hurt to witness.

"Yes," he said, voice thin. "Thank you. You may leave now, Captain."

*


	5. 28

*

**28**

"You've lost weight," Younghyun said quietly one morning, when he met Wonpil in the antechamber to the royal bedroom.

Wonpil had a day full of appearances and abdication meetings. Princess Yeeun had suggested codenaming the secret committee planning for the abdication _Braveheart_ , laughing hysterically over speaker phone for fifteen minutes when Wonpil had asked her for unofficial, non-legally-binding constitutional advice.

" _Noona_ ," Wonpil had whined. "Nobody's going to _die_."

"But your freedom, Pirimiri," she had said fondly.

Six months later, Younghyun still barely dared to believe it was real. Even as the Palace machinery shifted gears around the nucleus of Wonpil, to make his dream reality.

Older, bruised and burnt, they could not allow themselves to let loose the way they had in London. But now, filled with tender hope, Younghyun could not deny himself this -- bridging the gap to brush his knuckles over the soft, freshly-shaved skin stretched over Wonpil's sharp cheekbone.

"There is so much to do," Wonpil replied, closing his eyes and leaning momentarily into the touch. He stepped close, in the cloistered privacy of his antechamber, to lean his forehead against Younghyun's sternum. "The mint is having a fit and a half about reissuing currency."

"They should just put an illustrious historical figure on it."

Wonpil laughed tiredly. "But who, and without insult to whom?"

Younghyun smirked. "The [mythical zombie-slaying King Jinyoung](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20451341), perhaps. Put a tiger on the other side."

"No, that's a terrible idea. Jinyoungie would gloat forever."

Wonpil withdrew from their loose embrace to sit in the reading chair and leaf through the morning paper wearily. Early sunlight fell in a shaft through the round window onto him, picking out the sun-lightened highlights in his hair, loving the sharp reliefs of his face. Younghyun had a brief fantasy of going to his knees and laying his head in that silk-clad lap. He shook himself out of it.

"There's one in the other Wonpil's world too," Younghyun said. "Did you meet him?"

"No. It didn't seem wise, to meet any others. We're quite different." Wonpil smiled briefly; the two Wonpils had crossed paths for only half an hour, at most. It had been striking, the differences and similarities. The way the other Wonpil had been so open and happy. He had dispensed affection so carelessly, even though Younghyun hadn't been _his_ Younghyun, nor Dowoon -- nor Jae -- nor Sungjin. "They were friends, too?"

"Yes." Younghyun smiled at him. "One of those universal constants, apparently."

"Mmmm ..." Wonpil looked far away for a bit, before coming back and smiling. "Like us."

Younghyun remembered the events of that night like a fever dream: the subway ride; other Wonpil bouncing with excitement; the creak of a door open into a darkened room. And then, _Hyung_ in a tone that broke his heart; the blur of getting to that bunk bed; the desperate stretch. The fall, the catch, the clutch tighter than practicality demanded or propriety allowed.

He had been glad of the fact of his back turned to the door, so that nobody could see his face before he'd pressed it into the crown of Wonpil's head. It had been a moment of weakness. It had been the relief loosening his limbs. It had been that old familiar rush; that intoxicating rush of terror and bewildered devotion like he was a teenager again, as they had cleaved together, Wonpil's face close enough to kiss for a split-second before he'd burrowed into Younghyun's embrace.

He remembered also going back out into the living room and the strange, painful feeling of deja vu.

It had been odd to see his doppelganger. Odder still to see a softer, happier version of himself, cowlicked and squinting, a sleepily quirked mouth whilst other Wonpil talked _at_ him, a torrent of uncurated words. Oddest of all, when he'd put a hand on other Wonpil's thigh and said, _Pirimiri, keep talking but I need coffee_. The other Wonpil had only laughed without care. Had said, sweet and indulgent as the richest honey, _Hyung you're going to turn into a giant coffee bean_.

He hadn't dared look at Wonpil, then, not wanting to see what would surely be the twin to this aching longing in his chest mirrored in Wonpil's eyes.

But Wonpil had dared.

He had dared the same way he'd struck the flint and lit up the tinder of their mutual desire in London. He had made poor young Corporal Nam take him to the Guards' quarters, all the way to Younghyun's door.

"You could've summoned me," he'd said, already moving aside.

"You've worked hard," Wonpil had replied, and closed the door behind him.

"I thought so," he said now. "He never said, but ..."

"If our counterparts don't sort themselves out," Wonpil said, sounding huffy, "I will personally go over again to yell at them."

" _Pyeha_ ," he said, injured. "Please."

Wonpil looked at him, wounded. "Not that, hyung, please. Not when we're alone."

"Sorry." Younghyun sighed. "I won't."

A knock on the door came, then -- breakfast had arrived.

"I'll have it in here," called Wonpil, clearing a stack of scores off the side table.

Younghyun took the tray, and uncovered a dreadfully healthy selection: a cup of coffee, mixed cereal rice, kimchi, and grilled fish. A small earthenware bowl of clear soup.

"I miss the food I had, in the other world." Wonpil picked at his fish. " _Ppang_ for breakfast every day. Once, the other Younghyun made _kimchi bokeum bap_ for dinner and let me have the leftovers for breakfast."

"We can't be that alike," said Younghyun, "if there were leftovers."

"Oh, apparently he was dieting."

"Dieting."

"For their comeback." Wonpil gave him an impish grin, the mischief doing strange gravity-defying things to Younghyun's insides. "Idol life, hyung. You are an idol in another universe."

Younghyun thought about the man he'd seen that night, rumpled in a motheaten t-shirt pulled out of shape and sleep-grit in his voice. The familiar sight of his own face puffy with sleep. "The other you said they were in a band."

"An idol band. Posters the size of a building. In the subway stops." Wonpil tapped his spoon against the side of his soup bowl. "On some show called Weekly Idol. You put your fist in my mouth. Well. Other you. Other me. It was distressing."

"He put his..." Younghyun trailed off. "They showed you that?"

"Well, I wanted to know what their work was like."

Younghyun snorted. "Not quite Dowoonie's underground gigs in Shoreditch, is it?"

"No, but fun anyway." Wonpil looked fond, and in that moment resembled his other self so much Younghyun ached, to know the possibility of him.

"Well, I'm glad you had fun."

"I did." Wonpil paused. "He was -- _is_ softer than you. And so -- so free." Frowned. "He teased _so much_. I don't know how the other me puts up with it."

"You like a bit of impertinence," said Younghyun, thinking of Dowoon, of Sungjin, of the way Wonpil had taken subtly to Corporal Nam and his flustered, illicit Chocopie dealings. Most of all of his incredibly chemistry with the chaos agent that had been Park Jinyoung at university.

"I assure you, hyung, this is far more than _a bit_."

"Well, other you isn't a king, either."

"True." Wonpil put his spoon down. "Do you want the rest of this? I'm not hungry."

Younghyun did cross the room then, and did go to his knees.

He picked the spoon up, wrapped Wonpil's fingers back around it. "Eat. You need it."

" _Hyung_." Wonpil's eyes had gone a little glossy when Younghyun looked up. "You --"

"I had my breakfast with the rest earlier. Please finish your breakfast, Wonpil-ah." He frowned and tapped the mackerel plate. "Come on, they've even deboned the fish for you."

Voice trembling a little, Wonpil pouted. "I don't see what that has to do with anything."

"It's easier for you to eat." Younghyun reached up to thumb at the tears beading along Wonpil's lashes. Right, then left. He'd never thought he'd get to do this ever again. "You've always been skinny to begin with."

Wonpil looked away once Younghyun took his hand back, fighting a smile. He slid the rest of his fish into his rice bowl in absolute contravention of etiquette and started eating obediently again. In between bites, he said, "Why, will you not love me anymore otherwise?", idly playful like his words hadn't passed through his mind at all.

They passed right through Younghyun's ribs to strike at his heart.

"Wonpil-ah." Something in his voice -- maybe the way it came out rough -- had Wonpil looking up mid-sip, eyes wide. "You know -- you know I always will."

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next chapter will be from wonpil's POV, set in the jejudo happytimes period :')
> 
> (eta) the king jinyoung + tiger mention is a reference to bysine's kingdom!AU [in famine, in feast](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20451341), in which jinyoung is the crown prince and jaebeom is a chakho, and they fight zombies (and corruption).


	6. 31 (32)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we depart about midway from the drabbles into sequel territory here.
> 
> from wonpil's POV, because something this sweet just felt right. I split this up into two, so there is now a chapter 7, where we return to younghyun's POV to wrap everything up.
> 
> I recommend listening to [TREASURE ISLAND by MILLIC ft Han](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcX1f1dM2SI) and [Dvorak's Opus 11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZTeavJ9frA) whilst you read this chapter and the next.

*

**31 (32)**

Younghyun came to Wonpil in the piano room holding a fat brown envelope one evening, tapping it against his palm.

"Old Yoon's thank you card, plus other things," he said. "Do you want to open it now?"

"Oh" -- Wonpil rose from the bench and shut the piano lid -- "Yes, do let's."

They went to the kitchen, where dinner was bubbling away on the stove, and spilled photographs out across the table.

"Oh my," said Wonpil. "There's rather a lot of us."

"Of you," corrected Younghyun, sorting through them with a funny little smile on his face. "I hate sharing you with the world, but this ..." he held up a photograph of Wonpil sticking his face into a hydrangea bush. "I suppose this might be worth it."

"But that's such a silly moment! What on earth ..."

"Damn," Younghyun breathed a while later. He held out a photograph for Wonpil's consideration.

It was a shot of them slow dancing in the field that Sergeant Yoon's family home on the other side of Jejudo backed out onto, framed by the blazing sunset. Younghyun's face could be seen from the side -- the only thing other than Wonpil's hanbok'd silhouette that identified them. Wonpil's face was tilted away from the camera. He thought he might have been laughing against Younghyun's chest, then, looking at the colours in the sky. He'd had a little more _soju_ than was wise, that day; everything had been very funny by the time the sky had been bruising purple and deep blue.

"I suppose it _is_ quite nice," Wonpil said doubtfully. "Perhaps I ought to send the photographer a note. You know, thank you for taking such nice photographs, even though we weren't the wedding couple."

Younghyun laughed; his face crumpled, soft and elastic and with a sort of abandon Wonpil would never get tired of watching.

"Though I remember what a bother that hanbok was," he added. "All those layers, honestly."

"It kept you warm when the night cooled," Younghyun pointed out practically, mouth still trembling with laughter.

"Oh." Wonpil put the photograph down and slid along the bench to climb into Younghyun's lap, to slide his arms around Younghyun's neck and smile at the corresponding press of Younghyun's arms around his hips. "But I had you, Captain."

\---

"You looked very lovely in that photograph from the good sergeant's wedding," Lady Noh told Wonpil, a few days later. Sergeant Yoon had apparently slipped a few photographs of them in, when he'd sent his thank you card to the Palace. "The both of you."

"I don't know why that guy took so many photographs of me," Wonpil replied crossly. He had on a gaming headset, having discovered the joys of hands-free calling, and so was peeling a tangerine whilst talking to Lady Noh. Very efficient, especially when Younghyun came in grubbily from the garden and stooped to be fed a segment.

"Because you're so handsome," Younghyun said after tucking the segment into one cheek pouch and kissing Wonpil's fingertips.

Lady Noh laughed; the microphone being sensitive enough to pick up Younghyun's wretched flattery. "So much charm, that one."

"I am uncharmed," said Wonpil flatly, whilst Younghyun made away with another segment.

The white dog whuffed and came to investigate the matter of its humans clustering in a corner.

"I do not recall teaching you to lie." Lady Noh sounded tart. "Besides, there is a very recent trove of evidence otherwise."

Wonpil whined, nudging the white dog away with his foot when it came close to beg for a slice. "Lady Noh, you musn't encourage him."

"I'm sure the Captain does quite well on his own."

Looking up at Younghyun, who'd gone to the kitchen to refill his water bottle and was now crossing the room back to the garden. He was tanned and a little sunburnt despite his hat, had a ragged towel about his neck and a streak of dark, loamy humus tracing the softened contour of his tricep.

Wonpil couldn't help but smile. "He does."

Lady Noh was quiet for a while. The sound of her hanbok rustling as she moved about what Wonpil imagined was the kitchen courtyard and inspected the large jars of fermenting goodies accompanied her breathing.

"Yes," she said at last. "It gladdens my heart very much to hear you sound so very happy, my boy."

Wonpil pursed his lips against the sudden sour spike in his sinuses. "I am, Lady Noh."

"Good." She paused and there was a knowing sort of smile in her voice that made Wonpil feel shy. "I trust you will make each other very happy for a very long time."

\---

Younghyun's parents were more direct.

"You'd look very handsome in a hanbok too, Younghyun-ah," Younghyun's mum said, rather terrifyingly. There was an enthusiastic light in her eyes that rivalled the way she'd looked at the white clouds wreathing Hallasan's peak on her last visit.

Younghyun was no use at all, having choked on his roasted barley tea. He was currently coughing like a chainsmoker.

"Um," said Wonpil uncertainly. He wondered if getting the white dog to sit on their wifi router would be sufficient excuse to pretend their video connection had failed. "I'm sure Sungjin-hyung would be happy to tailor him one. We can all dress up and go to that new slow food place Younghyun-hyung's friends opened on your next visit, _Eomonie_."

"A restaurant wedding?" Relentless as a typhoon, Younhyun's mum asked. "Very modern."

"No, _eomma_." Younghyun finally recovered enough to intervene, though he still sounded a little hoarse. "Not -- just for _lunch_ , please."

Next to Younghyun's mum, Captain Dad Kang was muffling laughter into his coffee mug.

"You know, Bae Gayoung's daughter is getting married soon. My old colleague in auditing, if you remember," said Younghyun's mum. "We got an invitation the other day."

" _Eomma_ ," groaned Younghyun, collapsing onto the coffee table and hiding his face in his crossed arms. He'd been sitting on the floor at Wonpil's feet -- or, rather with Wonpil's legs flung over his shoulders and Wonpil's feet in his lap. "We don't need a _wedding_."

Wonpil giggled and leaned over to pet his hair. "Hyung's been scarred by all the royal weddings past."

Cousin Queen Soojin had got married in spring, when she had judged the temperate Busan weather most pleasing to her Scottish in-laws. Truth be told, neither Younghyun nor Wonpil had been overly involved, tasked only to turn up, be stuffed into formal wear by Sungjin (his counterpart having taken charge of Soojin and the very bowled-over Lachlan), and not say anything embarrassing.

But then Younghyun had several months later at the _Scottish_ wedding been pressed into service, for Clan Sutherland had held the wedding on the green rolling fields surrounding a crumbling rock structure they called a _broch._ The Royal Guard had almost gone spare trying to secure it all.

" _Yeobo_ , let them be," Younghyun's dad said at last, having mastered himself. "It's enough to see them happy, I think."

\---

But the thought, once put into Wonpil's mind, stuck like a particularly stubborn splinter.

He didn't want a party or a feast or a spectacle, but he thought it might be quite nice to -- to give Younghyun something back, for the garden and the house and his many, unrelenting indulgences. To say, _you can stop repenting now; your penance was never necessary_ ; _I love you as illogically and unknowable as the winds of this island_.

So he called Sungjin-hyung whilst Younghyun was out on one of his terrible _batdam_ runs and babbled at him until Sungjin gave up and agreed to help him source a jeweller who would be discreet and make things to Wonpil's exact imaginations.

"Not that you've been very helpfully specific," muttered Sungjin. "Get me his ring size, would you? Oh, wait, never mind, I have that from the time we had gloves made -- right, I'll be in touch."

And then he hung up without fanfare.

Wonpil, used to it, wasn't offended.

The rest of summer passed peacefully, with occasional messages from Sungjin about jewellers, the ring designs, backhanded praise about Wonpil's initiative. As though Wonpil hadn't been living anything other than a life of initiative, since his trip across dimensions.

It was on the cusp of autumn (which came later in Jejudo than the rest of Korea) when Jae came visiting with mangoes hand-carried from Thailand.

"Tribute," he said ironically, setting the box down on their kitchen table. "To _sangwang jeonha_."

Sticking his face in through a gap in the top of the box, Wonpil inhaled deeply. His nose filled with the rich, sweet, yellow scent of the mangoes. He took a few more breaths, then emerged. "Your tribute is accepted. But hyung, I thought you were just being a polite guest."

Jae had been involved in some cultural diplomacy. Apparently he had been reunited with some members of EXO, who were all doing very well and wished him to pass on their well wishes. Baekhyun in particular wished to apologise (again) for jopping at Wonpil years before.

"Is that what it was called?" Wonpil inquired, still distracted by the mangoes, which Younghyun was unpacking. "I had forgotten. It was very exciting, I suppose. Very energetic, wasn't it, hyung?"

Younghyun nodded as he set Jae's precious cargo in a hand-turned wooden bowl made by Fishmonger Harabeoji's son-in-law. "Corporal Nam was very excited. I remember that."

But the most salient thing was, of course, the mangoes.

"I got these from a roadside stall," Jae said. They were experimenting with adding chopped up mango into their _ssam_ , there having been far too many that were ripe to bursting. "Took a _tuk-tuk_ with one of those Thai idols who were doing the diplomatic lubrication."

Younghyun made a face at Jae's choice of words.

"How exciting," Wonpil said idly, flipping a slice of pork neck on the grill. They were eating on the verandah: black pork from the local butcher's and the leaves from their garden. "Darling, doesn't Jae-hyung lead an exciting life?"

"Thrilling," deadpanned Younghyun, who had been almost kneecapped earlier in the week by two overexcited eight year olds playing with wooden boards.

Wonpil made sure to send him a laughing look through his eyelashes as he gave him the perfectly charred bit of pork.

"You could still participate in these things, you know." Jae peeled a slice of pickled radish off the stack in the repurposed tea saucer. "People still wonder how you're doing."

Wonpil looked at him, and then leaned into Younghyun's shoulder, to his right. "I don't think I shall. Past kings should gracefully disappear from the public eye. And I like our house too much to leave it for very long."

"We are planning a trip to visit with Buyeong- _daegam_ , though, aren't we?" Younghyun said, having swallowed the ssam he'd been working on.

"Mmm. Dowoonie would be sad, otherwise. Finally going to do that trip to Ireland, too."

"Finally," Younghyun agreed, and smiled down at him.

Jae sighed and slapped a perilla leaf into his palm. "You two make me feel painfully single. Especially since Dongwook-hyung got married last year."

Mischief sparked under Wonpil's palms; he grinned at Jae. "Sungjin-hyung is single too."

" _Do not_ ," said Jae, and shoved a slice of grilled mushroom into Wonpil's mouth.

He laughed around it undecorously, which rather set the tone for the rest of dinner.

Younghyun eventually leaned over to spread the final slices of black pork on the grill; the fat sizzled and popped upon contact. "You meet plenty of people in your line of work, don't you?"

"I do not want to talk about this," said Jae. "Just leave me alone to die tragically. Alone."

Wonpil piled on a spoon of mango onto the ssam he'd been making and handed it to Jae. "You won't die alone, hyung, you have us."

"You made me a wrap?" Jae looked more touched by this than Wonpil's reassurances. "I'm honoured, _jeonha_."

"Wonpilie makes everyone wraps," Younghyun told him, giving Wonpil a nudge.

When Wonpil glanced up at him, he found an expectant look on Younghyun's face. Heaving a faux-put-upon sigh, Wonpil reached out for one of the remaining leaves in their bamboo basket.

"I'm making up for lost time," Wonpil said. "All those years nobody wanted me to wrap things for them, and _noona_ said my fingers were too grubby to trust."

Wonpil looked up from carefully arranging fillings to a strange look on Jae's face; the one on Younghyun's was much more familiar. Wonpil hastened to fold the lettuce leaf into a neat packet and proffer it up. He still wasn't entirely sure how to take away that look, or how to excise the unnecessary guilt that dogged Younghyun.

"I like it," said Younghyun, and opened his mouth to be fed.

Jae muttered something under his breath and flopped down onto his back. His head landed on the white dog, who'd been lying behind Jae casting them pitiful looks. The dratted thing, of course, whined a little in protest, before slinking along to lick opportunistically at Jae's oily fingers.

When all the food was gone, the moon had sailed high into the sky, round and shining silver.

They left him on the verandah with his mug of tea; Younghyun went to slice up more mangoes for dessert and Jae had offered to help take things into the sink.

Lying on his side and facing out into the garden, Wonpil sunk into a daze. Moonlight silvered the grass, filtered through the border trees to dapple Younghyun's plants with dancing shadows. The white dog was patrolling, slipping from shadow to shadow. Behind him were the sounds of Younghyun's knife against the chopping board, and ceramic plates being splashed about in the sink.

Wonpil turned onto his back, cushioning his neck with an arm, to contemplate the lamp that hung from a hook in a crossbeam abovehead. Fireflies danced in that yellow spill of light. There, from deep within him, swelled up a tidal wave of contentment. Here he had all he could possibly need to be happy: Younghyun, friends, a room of his own.

He was still thinking inchoate thoughts about the nature of joy and the stabilising effect of having _chosen_ to be rooted somewhere, when Jae joined him.

There was yet another strange look on Jae's face as he sat cross-legged next to Wonpil. The white dog came and lay its head in Jae's lap, possibly hoping for more treats.

"What's up, hyung?" Wonpil murmured. "Why are the mangoes taking so long?"

"They're being very carefully dissected." Jae still looked a little distracted even as he was looking right at Wonpil.

Wonpil frowned; it was not that he minded _not_ being the focus of anyone's attention (other than Younghyun), but this was odd.

"Are you sure, hyungie? Are you having an allergy?"

Jae coughed out a laugh, then, before he pat Wonpil on the head -- the daring!

"I'm fine, Wonpilie. It's just ... being here, I'm really happy for you guys, you know?" He shot Wonpil a look. "Especially when I think about, you know. When you guys were in that post-divorce couple stage, and Dowoonie was caught in a custody battle, and I just wandered into live with all that like some kind of blinkered idiot."

"Oh." A distant pang shuddered its way through Wonpil's insides. It was funny, sort of, to hear Jae's summary of those tense, unhappy days. Jae really had been caught between the hammer of Lady Noh's will and the anvil of his and Younghyun's joint misery. But third year would have been all the more unbearable, if Jae hadn't been around. "Well, that's all long past now."

"I'm glad for you," Jae said again, leaning back on his hands. "Really, really."

\---

The rings blew in on a winter storm with Sungjin on a long weekend, eventually, and went to live with Wonpil's scores in his piano bench. Wonpil just couldn't sort out a time for this, or a way to broach the topic. Which was funny, because now they shared everything.

 _Love_ , he imagined saying. _I want to show you something_.

But where? By the buckwheat field? On the beach? In the garden, whilst the white dog begged for attention at their knees? It was too overwhelming to think about for too long.

He dithered about it. Turned over in bed ready to say something, and then his words failed him when he found Younghyun asleep, or looking at him in that specific way, or the other specific way. Thought about interrupting dinner in the making. Fantasised, briefly, about a scavenger hunt. About hiding the ring in a cake; he quickly discarded the idea in case Younghyun choked on it and died.

The weather warmed again, and brought with it Dowoon.

"Dowoonie," Wonpil said after lunch one day. It was just the three of them; Wonpil playing Dowoon the sketches of his latest commission whilst Dowoon lay starfished on the floor, the white dog's head on his thigh. The windows of the piano room had been thrown open, and a faint breeze ruffled the thin linen curtains dyed brown with persimmon. Vegetables Harabeoji's daughters ran a small family business making these things with the cast-off rinds from Buckwheat Ajumma's tangerine orchard.

Stirring from the post-prandial doze he had fallen into, Dowoon lifted his head. "Hyung?"

Wonpil got up and crouched down next to his piano bench, lifting the lid. "I need advice."

In the most unregal manner possible, Dowoon rolled over to him. And then he got up in a hurry when Wonpil carefully shook the rings loose from the velvet drawstring bag into the palm of his hand.

"Wait -- what? Hyung! What!" Dowoon's eyes were round as saucers; he glanced quickly between the rings and Wonpil rapidly. "Wait, does this mean -- does Younghyun-hyung _know_?"

Wonpil shook his head. "That's my problem."

"I don't understand," said Dowoon plaintively. "You're basically married."

"Exactly!" Wonpil flapped his arms a bit in frustration. He was still discovering all these new, free ways of self-expression. "That's why! How do I say, oh -- let's -- let's get married when we already -- it just sounds absurd. And _when_ , and you know Younghyunie-hyung doesn't want a wedding."

A distant look of horrified reminiscence darkened Dowoon's face. "I understand."

"And neither do I, really."

They fell into silence for a bit, and then Dowoon perked up.

"Well, if neither you nor hyung want a wedding, you could always just go to a ... the city hall?"

"Dowoonie," Wonpil said solemnly, feeling a little like when he splashed cold water on his face on a winter morning. "You're a fucking genius. Yes! Let's -- oh, but hyung is at taekwondo, so we'll have to wait for him to get back." He got up. "Oh wait, no, or -- he's got the car, he could just _meet us in Seogwipo_."

"Smashing!" declared Dowoon in English. "A _wedding_!"

"It's not a wedding," Wonpil reminded him. "We don't want a wedding."

"All right, officialising. Whatever you want to call it." Dowoon rolled his eyes. "I shall be your witness, how fun!"

"Oh, I think we might need another. I'll phone Vegetables Halmeoni." Wonpil jumped up to fetch his laptop. "Do you think they do walk-ins?"

"I don't know, but they'd hardly turn _you_ away, hyung."

"And do you think we'll need our papers? Oh dear." Wonpil rerouted to the corner of the piano room that they kept a safe in, for important paperwork and suchlike. "Dowoonie, look it up for us, would you?"

"The website's all in Corean, hyung," Dowoon announced with no little dismay a few minutes later. "It's all difficult words, too."

"Oh." Wonpil straightened up from where he'd been rifling through their folders. "Sorry, I forget -- you speak so well."

"I could phone them," said Dowoon. "You've still got a landline, don't you?"

"All right, you do that; I'll get our other witness."

"And don't forget to tell hyung too."

Wonpil paused, then laughed. "Can you _imagine_ if we all turned up and forgot all about Younghyunie-hyung."

But nobody forgot about anyone, and it turned out that the City Hall in Seogwipo wasn't very booked up on a random Tuesday, and also that they had no idea who'd just phoned them.

The inimitable Sergeant Han drove them to Seogwipo, Corporal Nam entertaining the white dog in the back of the mini-van. She had merely raised her eyebrows and said, "Ah, congratulations, _jeonha_. Do we need to pick the Captain up?"

Which Wonpil felt rather showed her quality, all around.

"I put on my nicest shirt," Wonpil told Younghyun very sincerely when he finally turned up. His hair was still a little damp, and was settling rather rakishly as it air dried. He must have had his windows open as he had driven over. "And shorts."

"That's my shirt," replied Younghyun, tugging fondly at Wonpil's earlobe.

"But these are definitely my shorts," Wonpil said, rubbing his hands across the finespun linen. He had been happily occupied with filling out forms whilst waiting.

"If you're quite finished with determining the ownership of your various articles of clothing, Captain," said Sergeant Han tartly, "I believe they are only waiting for you."

She had originally been standing outside the registrar's office with the white dog and Corporal Nam, until Dowoon had insisted that it accompany him.

The city hall staff had not quite known what to do in the face of the Crown Prince's stubborn conviction and Wonpil's distraction upon discovering that Dowoon and Younghyun had been calling the white dog _Param_ behind his back all these years. They had been nervously considering calling in the manager when Vegetables Halmeoni had come to the rescue and cried, "Nonsense! All of you come in!"

Now she stood with Dowoon at the counter whilst Dowoon enthusiastically tested his seal on the back of an outdated tourist map of Seogwipo to make sure he would stamp it the right way up at the crucial moment, and was supervising the long-suffering counter staff eat the traditional rice flour biscuits that she had produced from her purse.

It was the perfect smokescreen and distraction from Younghyun's unassuming arrival.

Wonpil laughed and handed Younghyun the clipboard and pen. "He's only just got here, Sergeant, have a heart."

As Younghyun initialed his way through the forms, Wonpil ran his fingers idly through Younghyun's hair and considered him: strong and golden from the sun, dressed in his newest navy t-shirt with SABEOMNIM printed across the back and ripped grey jeans, that indulgently entertained smile dimpling his cheeks.

"This is a good look on you, hyung," Wonpil murmured, and ran his knuckles down Younghyun's soft cheek.

Looking up, Younghyun's eyes curved. There were now wrinkles that spidered away from his eyes when he smiled like this. Wonpil wanted to press his lips to them every single time.

The ceremony itself happened very quickly and almost dispassionately (Dowoon cried, unexpectedly, and Param whimpered sympathetically); it was as though the registrar herself only wanted to get this over and done with.

"An honour," she said, whilst shaking hands and ushering them out of the room. "Truly, an honour, _jeonha_. Captain."

"Thank you," Wonpil beamed back at her anyway, swinging his and Younghyun's clasped hands. Their clasped, be-ring'd hands.

Younghyun said nothing, but tugged him away. As though Wonpil wouldn't have noticed Sergeant Han lingering behind to give the poor staff a good old Palatial confidentiality talking to.

"Hyung" -- Wonpil swung their hands up in front of them -- "did you notice anything special about the rings?"

He watched, fondness melting in his arteries, as Younghyun frowned at their clasped hands. They had paused under the cupola of the entrance hall, Corporal Nam a few metres away with Param nosing at his pockets.

Younghyun slid the tip of his index finger along the beaten steel of his ring, eyes narrowed in contemplation. Each ring was actually made up of two hoops. On the inside of the ring was carved the main motif of the piece that Wonpil had composed for Younghyun in third year, and then rewrote when they had moved to Jejudo. The join of the two hoops was at the long, dotted crotchet of the motif. The precision of the design and the carving had moved Wonpil almost to tears, when he had received the final design.

"I don't know," Younghyun said at last, worrying his finger along the wave patterns on the outside of his ring. "It's special because you had them made?"

Wonpil rolled his eyes, laughing. "No, hyung, look --" he untangled their fingers briefly to slide his nail into the thin joint where the two hoops that formed each of their rings locked together. The seam was almost invisible to the naked eye. The top hoop snicked silently apart from the bottom one; Younghyun caught it swiftly in his right palm.

"See, it comes apart, and there's a chain for it" -- Wonpil dug in his pocket and retrieved the silvery thing -- "so you can wear your ring like a necklace when you're gardening."

"Oh." Younghyun's head was bowed; he sounded a little choked up. "Wow."

Wonpil ducked under to peer up into Younghyun's face. He was rather pink about the nose, glossy-eyed, and his chin was trembling.

"Oh, hyung, don't cry." Wonpil reached up to wipe the tears beading on Younghyun's lashes away. "I just wanted to be practical."

"I know," said Younghyun, still sounding stuffy, and then bent to kiss Wonpil again in front of the six other people in the City Hall on this sleepy Tuesday afternoon.

Fortunately, the entrance hall being one room removed from the counter full of staff who knew exactly who Wonpil was, nobody took much notice of them.

"Newly-weds," said a passing ajusshi with a snort.

Wonpil laughed against Younghyun's lips; they had kept it mostly chaste, after all, and now broke apart, Wonpil rocking back down onto his heels and sliding his hands down from where he'd been clinging onto Younghyun's shoulders.

"We are, aren't we?" he asked, prying Younghyun's right hand open to reveal his ring. The precisely cut edges of the hoops had cut a little into Younghyun's palm, and Wonpil rubbed at the red marks, cooing in the back of his throat.

There was a note of dawning wonder in Younghyun's voice when he replied. "Yes, we ... we are."

Wonpil wanted to lean into him again, to burrow under his shirt and rest his ear against the bare skin stretched over Younghyun's sternum so that he could hear what that sounded like, inside and out. To memorise the exact pitch and timbre of it, and put it into song.

"I sort of want to just go home now," Younghyun continued. He snapped the ring back together and slid it back down to rest against his knuckle; Sungjin really had done an excellent job with sourcing the rings.

But when they finally got out of the doors -- newly-weds, hangers-on, dog and all -- Sergeant Han insisted that photographs be taken.

"You'll regret it if you don't," she said, so sternly that they hadn't bothered putting up a fight.

There was a brief conference to determine who had the best phone camera (Dowoon), and then several photographs with various groupings of people were taken until Wonpil's patience abruptly ran out, and he stalked down the wide steps mid-instruction to please look a little less long-suffering, Wonpil-ah.

Pleased, Dowoon cheered, "Let's get a DRINK!"

"He's your problem now," Wonpil overheard Younghyun say smugly to Sergeant Han.

Whatever reply Sergeant Han made, Wonpil didn't hear, for Param had left Dowoon momentarily to come herd them away, and Younghyun laughed so loud and bright Wonpil was quite distracted.

"Come on." Younghyun slid an arm around Wonpil's waist and bussed him on the side of the head. "Param has spoken."

And so they trundled merrily off down the street to the nearest watering hole.

\---

It was a good thing in the end that Sergeant Han had insisted on photographs.

Three weeks after the bit of mid-week excitement at the City Hall, they realised they had forgotten to tell everyone else.

This discovery was facilitated, of course, by Sungjin.

"When are you going to give him those rings, you fool," Sungjin demanded without niceties when Wonpil picked up his call.

"Oh!" Wonpil paused in the middle of picking off the ends of beansprouts from the market. He glanced up; Younghyun was looking similarly stricken. "Um. Oh. Sungjin-hyung, you're on speakerphone."

Sungjin swore rather loudly and colourfully.

"Also," Younghyun added, "we're married."

"Hyung!" Wonpil protested.

"You _WHAT_ ," bellowed Sungjin, and proceeded to swear some more.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Wonpil cried, glad that at least speakerphone meant Sungjin couldn't see the way his cheeks were trembling with withheld laughter. "It all rather happened on a whim!"

"A WHIM," shouted Sungjin, then "OW FUCK."

"Oh dear, have you stabbed yourself with a needle?"

"You overly solicitious brat," said Sungjin, who clearly had done exactly just that. "Have you told no-one?"

Silence reigned in the kitchen for a long minute, but for the bubbling over of the stockpot on the stove and the ticking of the fox-shaped clock on the wall next to the refrigerator.

"Not even your _parents_?" asked Sungjin incredulously. "Or your sister? Lady Noh?"

"It was just a bit of paperwork," mumbled Wonpil, feeling rather abashed. "We'll tell them."

"I hope you have photographs, though I shudder to think what you were wearing."

"His best shirt." Younghyun rested a faintly garlicky hand on Wonpil's cheek, smiling at him to undercut the faint mockery in his voice. "And shorts."

"Of course. Well. Congratulations, I suppose."

"Nothing much has changed," Younghyun said, smile widening when Wonpil nuzzled into his palm. "Maybe that's why we forgot."

Sungjin's sigh was so loud and heartfelt it crackled over the connection.

After he had hung up, they considered the photographs from that evening. They had gone to Vegetable Halmeoni's for dinner after the pub; she had waved them off and caught the bus home from the city hall to start cooking.

All photographs from her house featured the pair of them flushed and leaning into each other at the low table; Param climbing into Dowoonie's lap in the blurred background; the rough-hewn and varnished table covered in dishes in various stages of demolishment.

"I like them," Wonpil said.

"Me too. They're honest."

"But not terribly presentable, are we?" Wonpil sighed and felt a bit of the old tiredness threaten.

Younghyun laughed and ran his fingers through Wonpil's tangle of curls, catching quickly on a knot. He knelt up to worry away at it. "We aren't very presentable on the best of days, sweetheart."

So they ended up having to send the photos taken outside the City Hall as a wedding announcement, but only to the people whom they knew would be upset. Who were, in any case, going to be upset.

"You were hiking the Amalfi Coast!" Younghyun protested, when his parents video-called from Greece and started shouting without bothering with greetings.

"You were presenting at that very important conference in Vienna!" said Wonpil on the other side of the room to Yeeun-noona.

"There really wasn't time, hyung," said Younghyun to Sergeant Yoon a day or so later, "really, I just saw the text from _jeonha_ during a water break and legged it down to Seogwipo right after dismissing my students. And showering."

"Oh, but Lady Noh," Wonpil protested finally, leaning against Younghyun for support, "it's all because we didn't _want_ to bother with a wedding."

Jae and Sungjin came together in early winter, just as some inconvenient snows had blanketed the island.

"The Palace," Sungjin reported, "is very upset with Sergeant Han and Corporal Nam for not telling."

"I knew they were good people," said Wonpil, and resolved to send them some of Younghyun's tangerine jam later in the season.

Jae just laughed at it all, and used his earnings from his recent crossover success into pop ("pansori pop? I guess?") to buy them all a _hwe_ dinner in a village downhill, on the coastline.

"Hyung, you're the best," Younghyun said fervently, surfacing briefly. Wonpil reached up and wiped away some of the _chu-gochujang_ that had smeared on his chin in his voracious feasting. "Oh, thanks sweetheart."

"For tonight," said Jae, squinting at them, "I'm celebrating you guys. Tomorrow, I go back to complaining."


	7. 33

**33**

One year after signing their marriage licence, they finally gave in.

"A garden wedding," Wonpil insisted to Lady Noh over the phone. "Small. Just family and some friends. Sungjin. And Jae, too, if he's got the time."

The guest list inevitably expanded to include all Guards, as well as their neighbours, who would inevitably have felt left out.

"Our garden isn't big enough for this." Younghyun stood in their garden, arms akimbo and surveying the last of his staked tomatoes. It was pleasantly warm still in late September.

So they had a street party instead, spilling out onto the dirt track that wound further up the hill from their garden to join one of the minor _olles_ not marked on any tourist maps.

Garden Harabeoji helped to redirect traffic on the morning of, as the various vehicles used to transport their party guests from Jeju-shi stoppered up the narrow paved street off which their house sat.

"Sorry," he could be heard telling the occasional delivery driver and lost tourist, "we're having a wedding. Please go around the other way." He had gone so far as to set up a blockade of sorts with repurposed crab catchers.

Param, of course, was delighted by the plethora of new friends, and got under everyone's feet.

"You have a dog!" Queen Soojin dropped to her knees in the grass to rub at Param's neck vigorously. Lady Noh sucked in one elegant breath, before turning away. Soojin was wearing jeans, in any case, having put her foot down about the dress code.

"Nobody is wearing a hanbok," she had said when Sungjin had pleaded over conference call to "Just let me put you in one nice thing" a fortnight earlier; Sungjin had sulkily acquiesced, much to Younghyun's amusement. Sungjin was finding Soojin much less agreeable than Wonpil had been.

"Oh," Wonpil told her, sitting cross-legged to put his hands in Param's fur as well. "I think it's more like the dog has _us_. Param was already here when we moved in, and adopted us."

"They do tend to do that," said Lachlan, Prince Consort and accomplished bagpipe player. He was wearing his clan tartans, and had brought along his bagpipes to nearly everybody's delight.

The neighbourhood halmeonis and harabeojis were, in any case, and Dowoon had been prevailed upon to pack a snare drum and play accompaniment.

"Oh my," said Younghyun's mother, barely audible over the jubilant blaring of the bagpipes. "This is very ... vigorous."

"I think it's a jig of some kind, _eo_ _monie,_ " Wonpil told her. "I quite like it."

"Of course you would." She pat his hand and gave Younghyun a significant look that he couldn't parse.

When the performance was concluded, Prince Buyeong boomed, "Oh, jolly good! Very well done!" from the speakers they had set up around the projector screen in the field. The internet was still holding up; his enormous wrinkled face along with _chakeun halmeoni_ 's on the screen was still clear as they leaned in and squinted into the camera.

Younghyun was in a knot of Guards, who had converged upon him and borne him away once the eating part of the party was over, at some point in the bagpipe recital. As his old colleagues regaled him and each other with the tales of Prince Buyeon's exploits and updates about gossip across the entire sprawling grapevine of Guard past and present, Younghyun looked about the field.

There Wonpil was, making his way over to Lachlan and Dowoon, the dynamic in-law duo, who were also currently bent over in front of the laptop and talking to Dowoon's grandparents. His curls were being tossed about in the brisk winds coming off the ocean and endangering the tablecloths.

"Yah," said old Sergeant Shin, who had come down all the way from Gangwondo in his retirement, and now had more white than black in his hair, "Kang Younghyun, take your eyes off _jeonha_ for a second, would you?"

Younghyun jumped, and turned his attention guiltily back.

But they were all laughing at him -- with their eyes, or out loud, in the case of Sergeant Han, who truly had no fear. She knew that they owed her one, too.

"Ah, some things really don't change," sighed Sergeant Yang (who had been Corporal in London). "I remember when --"

Whatever he said next, Younghyun didn't know, having quickly invented an excuse with regards to dessert and fled.

\---

After the whole madcap affair -- after everyone had left -- they lay on their verandah atop flat cushions like inverted commas, Param dreaming little doggy dreams at their feet. The sun had only just started sinking towards the sea, but --

"I," declared Younghyun, "am exhausted."

"Mmm. Let's never do that again."

There were many things that Younghyun loved about Wonpil, but one of the most precious was this: Wonpil, eyes closed, curled into his chest, words chewed away by sleep, sounding small and sweet and vulnerable.

"What, get married?" he teased.

Wonpil furrowed his brows, sunk a long piano-elegant finger into his chest, which was softer than it had been when they had first come to Jeju. But Wonpil never let him feel self-conscious about that.

"Definitely not that. You're only allowed to marry me."

"Am I?" Younghyun pretended surprise, and then gathered Wonpil closer when he made a grumpy noise of discontent. "Is it too late for a refund?"

"Yes. Hyung, stop teasing."

There was something entirely too compelling about the way Wonpil pouted. Perhaps it was because for so long, his sulks had been reserved only for Younghyun. It had seemed an injustice at the time, but now Younghyun knew it for the gift of trust that it had been.

"Sorry, sweetheart," he said a few beats too late. "You know I don't mean it."

He watched as Wonpil's brows smoothed out and his mouth relaxed as he drifted closer to sleep. It occurred to Younghyun that he'd been watching Wonpil in one way or another for the past three decades since that first long ago meeting.

"But, hyung," Wonpil murmured suddenly, stirring a little. His lashes lifted in what looked like a monumental effort. "Thank you."

It was still a little struggle, whenever Wonpil thanked him, to accept it. When there were so many years of hurt behind them. No longer between them, no, but -- fingers landed on his jaw, cool and faintly calloused, now.

" _Hyung_."

"Thank you too," he murmured, turned his face to kiss at fingertips. Nosed a little lower to kiss the cool band of metal sitting at the base of Wonpil's ring finger. Lower still to press his lips, long and lingering, to Wonpil's steady pulse.

Eventually, Wonpil slid his hand away into Younghyun's hair. "What for?"

Younghyun inhaled. With the sun slipping below the horizon, the night air took on a chill that sharpened the salt-tang and astringent camellia in the air. He sighed the lungful out, watched his breath ruffle Wonpil's hair. "Everything. And you?"

Wonpil wiggled up in his embrace so they were nose to nose, eyes to eyes, lips a bare inch apart. "Thank you for letting me love you." His eyes had shut again; he was a little pink. Despite everything, he was still not accustomed to being so straightforward about his tenderest vulnerabilities. "And thank you, for letting yourself ..."

"Love you too," Younghyun finished, murmuring it against Wonpil's mouth. Pressed in, then, so that they lost themselves for a bit. Disgruntled Param, when Wonpil tugged until Younghyun eased atop him, between his legs.

When they surfaced, Younghyun added, "Though I don't think I could have helped it, in the end."

“It?" Wonpil's mouth was wet and red. Younghyun sat back and pulled Wonpil up, all the way into his lap and wrapped around him.

"You," said Younghyun, grunting a little as he gathered his feet under, lifted and stood, Wonpil yelping a little in alarm.

"Me," he elaborated, going back into the house.

The door could be left open; there was no rain forecasted.

And then dropping Wonpil onto their bed, he climbed back over him. Wonpil's eyes were shining with intent; Wonpil's arms were already reaching out for him.

"Us."

* * *

_You do not have to be good.  
_ _You do not have to walk on your knees  
_ _for a hundred miles through the desert repenting._  
 _You only have to let the soft animal of your body  
_ _love what it loves._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, the epigraph & end quote are from mary oliver's [wild geese](http://www.phys.unm.edu/~tw/fas/yits/archive/oliver_wildgeese.html). a wonderful poem you should read in full at the link.
> 
> well, here we are. the end of this thoroughly unexpected detour into a remix of an AU of an AU. a side quest that expanded beyond all initial reckoning. 
> 
> last but not least, thank you to bysine for all your lovely comments (and starting this all with your DRABBLES) as well as to kang younghyun himself [for supplying the closing lines](https://twitter.com/youngfeelpics/status/1295640870729814016?s=20) for this. I almost had a stroke when I saw that exchange on instagram and immediately decided I HAD to finish this fic. I love this jeju rustication AU and hope you have enjoyed it too.


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